prosfilaes wrote:I don't see that in practice. The standard English translation of Don Quixote is almost as old as Don Quixote himself. There's a constant stream of new translations of public domain works, and most of them never surpass earlier translations.

You're right - I shouldn't have used better. I like your way of saying it - they'll each be perfect in their own way.

What does "however they wish" mean, exactly? People may use our recordings to profit; Anyone may do all kinds of things that you would prefer them not do - and you have no recourse to change that. For example you might see:
...
our recording clipped apart and rearranged as a ransom note, signed with your name and city.

Perhaps that description needs to be revised a bit. How many laws would someone violate if they actually did that? (Fraud, slander, defamation, not to mention that if they're sending a ransom note, they've probably kidnapped someone.) The point is, there's a lot more than just licenses restricting what someone can do with a recording, and just because something is in the public domain that doesn't free someone to disobey the law! The above statement seems to imply otherwise, which would certainly discourage people.

On a slightly different tangent, I've been developing open source software for a long time. The debates over different licenses in that community are far more heated and passionate than almost anything I've seen on Librivox. And there's a certain attitude that seems to be very, very common that I can't quite explain. People are happy to give away their work for free; they want to help others; they don't care about making money off their work; but they can't stand the thought that anyone else might make money off their work. This is a very common reaction, yet I can't figure out any logical justification for it. I'm well aware that people are selling my software on Ebay, but as long as they don't pretend to have written it themselves and freely disclose that it's open source software, I'm not going to waste time worrying about it. And I spent years writing commercial software, and made use of a ton of open source programs and libraries while doing so. I don't think I was exploiting anyone: I always was careful to follow the licenses, and I was really grateful for all the excellent free software that saved me a ton of work. And I hope that my own open source projects are able to help other people in the same way, including people who develop commercial software.

That's how I see Librivox. We're creating a resource that can be used by anyone for any (legal) purpose. And even if we don't like every use that anyone makes of that resource, we all benefit from its existence.

peastman wrote:That's how I see Librivox. We're creating a resource that can be used by anyone for any (legal) purpose. And even if we don't like every use that anyone makes of that resource, we all benefit from its existence.

peastman wrote: our recording clipped apart and rearranged as a ransom note, signed with your name and city.
Perhaps that description needs to be revised a bit. How many laws would someone violate if they actually did that? (Fraud, slander, defamation, not to mention that if they're sending a ransom note, they've probably kidnapped someone.) The point is, there's a lot more than just licenses restricting
what someone can do with a recording, and just because something is in the public domain that doesn't free someone to disobey the law! The above statement seems to imply otherwise, which would certainly discourage people.

Yes, I agree with this statement, Peter. I think that this point deserves more discussion. What are your thoughts?

I saw an article in a newspaper a while back about a lady (here in Quebec) who did an interview with a girl, and a seconds-long excerpt from that interview was used in a song by an US band (the way they did it gave a sexual undertone to the excerpt) , and the lady is actually suing for violation of privacy. (under the Qc Charter of rights.)

Not sure what came out of it, but the point is that it's not only copyright that's applicable.

Put yourself in the Readers' Accents Table. See this post.
(Busy real life & traveling, sorry if not here often.)

quebec has really strange laws on this - it started with a lawsuit against a photographer in the late 80s... pic of a person appeared in a newspaper; person sued for privacy; judge ruled in their favour, so now in order to take a pic or vid of anyone that might appear in public, you need them to sign a waiver.

i hadn't heard about this for audio, but i expect that's the precedent under which the woman is suing.

but in the case that you explicitly put your recordings into the public domain, you surely are relinquishing any privacy rights (related to that recording) as well as copyrights.

hugh wrote:quebec has really strange laws on this - it started with a lawsuit against a photographer in the late 80s... pic of a person appeared in a newspaper; person sued for privacy; judge ruled in their favour, so now in order to take a pic or vid of anyone that might appear in public, you need them to sign a waiver.

yeah, the Aubry case, we had to read it for one of my classes. And then there are distinctions about whether the person is the "object" of the picture or just happens to walk by when you took your pic.

Sorry, I didn't want to look like I did some hit-n-run trollage here - got a bit busy. I've read and understood all of the above, but I STILL don't get why something like they have just changed to here:http://wiki.eeeuser.com/

This website is no longer under a Creative Commons license.
All rights are reserved by Eeeuser.com and each individual author
If you want to reproduce content, all individual contributers must be identified and you must seek permission from Eeeuser.com

OK, maybe not seeking permission of course, but why not just tag on "commercial reproduction prohibited"?

Short version number 2: since LV doesn't have any funds, who pays for the legal fees? And, yes, there will be some, because somebody will use it commercially, and we'll discover it (or have it pointed out), and we'll contact them and ask them to discontinue the use, and they'll say "fahgeddaboudit", and we'll have to go to court, and $$$$....

It'$ almo$t impo$$ible to enforce a licen$e unle$$ you have dollar$ (or other currencie$).

"Use it or lose it" doesn't apply to copyrights, unlike trademarks; and you don't need a lawyer to shut down eBay sellers or anyone with the ethics (or fear of the law) to listen to your license.

But commercial reproduction is such a broad and interesting set of things, and usually things that we couldn't do on an individual basis. On a group basis, the money would complicate things so that it would probably hurt the goal of actually recording these things. Yeah, allowing commercial reproduction is a good thing.